Pet Graveyard probably really hopes you’re confusing it with Pet Sematary

The condemned: Pet Graveyard (2019)
The plot: Let’s get the most logical question out of the way first—no, this movie has literally nothing to do with a pet graveyard. Instead, it’s basically a ripoff of Flatliners, meaning it’s impossible to shake the sneaking suspicion that the creators of this film either missed their window of opportunity to get this made two years ago when that remake came out (and thus miss the chance to name this movie Smoothliners or some such), or maybe they just saw that film and thought, “Hey, I know how to do that but without any money!”
Pet Graveyard follows sister and brother Lily (Jessica O’Toole) and Jeff (David Cotter) in the wake of their mother’s death. She’s struggling in nursing school; he’s a wannabe YouTube star risking life and limb for clicks. But he asks for her help when he finds two people, Zara (Rita Siddiqui) and Francis (Hindolo Koroma), who want to perform a magic ritual that will allow them to communicate with deceased loved ones—but it involves dying for a window of three minutes. Recording it for posterity and with Lily at the ready to bring them back, the three of them suffocate and awake in a vast blackness, where they meet those they’ve sought out. Or at least it seems like they do: After they’re resuscitated, those spirits start manifesting in the real world, along with a robed figure that wants their souls. As people start dying, the siblings have to find a way to beat back the Grim Reaper and keep Jeff from being dragged back into the afterlife.
Over-the-top box copy: Oh, this movie isn’t available in hard copy. It’s a strictly VOD-only beast at the moment. The tagline on the front image (“The space between life and death… can kill”) doesn’t make much sense, but it’s at least germane to the plot, so good on them.
The descent: Welcome to the world of the mockbuster! This is the first full-on mockbuster title we’ve done in Home Video Hell, though a few, like The Dawnseeker, came close. For those unfamiliar with the term, “mockbuster” refers to the practice of producing cheap rip-offs of better-known movies, releasing them around the same time in hopes of capitalizing on the buzz of the big-budget Hollywood spectacle they’re aping, and thereby luring unsuspecting or inattentive viewers into forking over some cash for the intentionally similar product. Normally I bypass crap like this, but it seemed worth doing this one, not only to finally directly address the mockbuster phenomenon in this feature, but because this one is weirdly misjudged.
It’s not a ripoff of Pet Sematary, the film it’s obviously trying to fool people into associating with it. As mentioned above, it’s more or less a straight plundering of the plot of Flatliners, but with all that pesky and time-consuming “science” stuff replaced with a simple ritual. And yet that title—Pet Graveyard—keeps tricking your mind. I continually waited for the pets and/or the graveyards to come into play, despite the film quickly establishing other stakes. It’s like a splinter in my mind, driving me mad. “Why? Why Flatliners disguised by Pet Sematary? Tell me!” Even though I know the answer: Pet Sematary is a better-known title, bigger budget, and more marketable, i.e., easy to rip off. But they didn’t have a lazy knockoff of that story lying around, so they found a different no-budget feature someone had already made (this was reportedly originally called Grim Reaper, which would actually make sense) and used that instead. voilà.
The theoretically heavenly talent: Please. This is a mockbuster, and not even one of the fancy ones made by The Asylum, like Snakes On A Train or Transmorphers. You haven’t heard of any of these people, and neither have I.
The execution: Right from the opening title cards, you know you’re in for rough going. You know how comedies will sometimes drag out their opening text crawls unnecessarily long for an easy laugh? Pet Graveyard does the straight-faced version of that: